New Chapter in 'The Book of Mozilla'

Sunday August 24th, 2003

It's one of the most well-known Easter eggs of all time. There can be few MozillaZine readers who are not aware that typing about:mozilla into the Location Bar of a Mozilla-based browser (or indeed, an earlier Netscape Navigator release) causes a verse from The Book of Mozilla to be displayed. In Netscape Navigator 1.1 to Netscape Communicator 4.8, the verse is from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10 (the numbers refer to December 10th 1994 and the release of Netscape Navigator 1.0), while in the later Mozilla builds, an extract from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31 (Red Letter Edition) is revealed (this time, the numbers refer to March 31st 1998, the date of the Netscape Communicator 5.0 source code release).

Soon, typing about:mozilla will show another installment of the Mozilla saga: The Book of Mozilla, 7:15 (Red Letter Edition), written by Neil Deakin. The date is of course July 15th 2003, the day that the Mozilla Foundation was formed and America Online closed the Netscape browser division. Look for the new about:mozilla page in a forthcoming build.

No, beast clearly refers to Mozilla. Because when the beast fell, "the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird." The unbelievers == people that use other browsers. The beast == Mozilla. You know what the bird means. ;-) And Mammon is clearly a reference to Microsoft, being that Mammon is "material wealth regarded as having an evil influence."

Actually, lots of people agree that the 'beast' that fell is Netscape being closed down by AOL. The 'great bird' that rose up was the Mozilla Foundation, established to continue Mozilla development. The 'fire and thunder' refers to Mozilla Firebird (now Mozilla Firefox) and Mozilla Thunderbird. The beast was 'reborned with its strength renewed' as the Foundation helped Mozilla develope more, instead of neglecting it, like AOL did. To read more, go to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mozilla>

No, it's not related to the Bible. about:mozilla just uses a "Bible quote" style, joking that the rise of Mozilla was prophesied long ago. The Book of Mozilla is fictional; the quotes from it are made up on an individual basis.

> Well, I've heard that the language was inspired by the Book of Revelation.

I believe the language was inspired more by the Authorized Version translation than anything.
It only sounds like the Bible if you're accustomed to reading the Bible in Early English.
There's nothing particular about the _content_ that sounds like scripture (except that it
is supposed to resemble prophesy), but rather the _language_ sounds like "Bible" to people
because the Bible is the primary book people are used to reading in Early English. (Note:
do not confuse Early English with Old English, which is much earlier.) The only other thing
still commonly read in Early English would be Shakespeare, but Shakespeare.

However:
"This is inappropriate to shove down the throats of other projects that will be
forced (as the patch stands) to accept this "feature". Phoenix and Chimera and
other Gecko projects don't want this, don't appreciate the humor (since they are
explicitely not "kitchen-sink" applications) and shouldn't be forced to accept
it no matter how small or cute some Mozilla developer thinks it is. Until this
can be made to only affect the Mozilla suite and not other embedding apps the
patch cannot be allowed to land. "
See bug 122411 for more information.

I like it. The Beast can be interpreted to be the App Suite, AOL/NS Corporatism, or a combination of political/architectural issues holding back the progress of Mozilla. Rising from the ashes implies a new beginning after the death of a previous life or paradigm. I don't think the symbolism could be more accurate or appropriate.

"The elementals fought and sent back the armies of Mammon to the inner world. The scribe ended the inspired parchments, letting the believers cry over that new view on Earth. Long after the thunder and the fire, came the sun and finally the long awaited rainbow...
from The Book of Mozilla, 8:23"

Does anyone know anything about that book? What does 8:23 refer to? What is the sun and the rainbow?